


beauty sleep

by Hope



Category: Lord of the Rings RPF, lotrips
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Fairy Tales, Lotrips - Freeform, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-01-14
Updated: 2004-01-14
Packaged: 2017-10-01 23:33:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hope/pseuds/Hope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>elijah frowns a little as the opening chords string out, sucking concentratedly on his finger where the needle pierced the skin as he slid the record beneath it. he flops onto the couch, smiling up at the ceiling as the sound envelopes him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	beauty sleep

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to mcee for the beta.

1\. on the eve of his twenty-third birthday, elijah pulls open the door of his sixth floor apartment and takes delivery of a parcel, invoice number ninezerotwoonesix. it's heavy, and he has to lift his knee up a bit to haul it in and knock the door closed with his hip. the air is heavy with music already but he gives a cry of delight when the thick brown paper is torn back and the polished cellophane sound of the cd player is cut off suddenly to be replaced by the familiar newsprint crackle of needle on vinyl.

elijah frowns a little as the opening chords string out, sucking concentratedly on his finger where the needle pierced the skin as he slid the record beneath it. he flops onto the couch, smiling up at the ceiling as the sound envelopes him.

2\. at eleven fourteen a.m. on the twenty-ninth of january, the door shakes with the pounding of hannah's fist. after six minutes the sound of a key snicking into the lock echoes through the thick wood and into the apartment. there are nine messages on his answering machine, one from his mother: _I suppose you're celebrating with hannah or dominic, and too busy to answer your cell... well happy birthday, sweetie. call me when you recover!_ one from dom, with billy laughing in the background: _where are you, mate, we stopped by on our way but there was no answer so we figured you'd already be here. did hannah kidnap you and foil our plans of inebriation?_ three birthday wishes from various friends and associates, and four from Hannah herself. _I'm on my way, birthday boy. You'd better be ready because I'm not fucking around that den of filth for hours waiting for you to pretty yourself up. _And_ I'm outside now, open the fucking door! C'mon pickuppickuppickup..._ and _well I'm at the bar now and can't see you anywhere. Did you stand me up, you fuck? Just because you're old now doesn't mean you can get away with this kind of shit._ And _Where the fuck are you? I called your cell, and mom, and dom... If you've gone off to have a night out without me, you will regret it._

The apartment is clotted thick with the harsh vintage crackling of needle on thoroughly scratched vinyl, the grooves rough and serrated with overuse. elijah is asleep on the couch.

3\. there are twenty-eight trees lining the driveway of the private hospital; elijah is in room fifty four. they keep it quiet - he's decided to drop his career, he doesn't like the fame, would like to be out of the private eye entirely. there's a small amount of controversy in the press over his contract with new line, but it dies down quickly enough. the doctors want him in the coma ward but elijah isn't comatose and debbie will have none of it anyway. they count elijah's blood and conclude that he hasn't overdosed, they count his heartbeats and brainwaves and deduce that he's deeply, healthily asleep. they don't know what's wrong. they don't know if anything's wrong. billy and dom visit every week until billy has to go to back to scotland and dom has to go to auditions. there are only two chairs to curl up uncomfortably on in the small room and debbie is always awkwardly draped within one. hannah crosses her arms sullenly just inside the door.

4\. the windows are always open to let in the salty-sandy-smoky warm LA air, and at dusk on the thirtieth of november they bring in the acrid waft of debbie's forty-fifth cigarette of the day as dom crawls onto the bed, his knees pressing deep into the mattress, distressing the tightly-tucked sheets. _wake up_, he whispers, pressing against elijah's unresponsive body. elijah's eyelids flutter with the movement of his dreams and his mouth is slack against the despairing press of dom's.

5\. on the fourteenth of may two thousand and five debbie takes elijah home. his money isn't about to run out soon, but it sure goes a lot slower without private hospital fees to eat it up. hannah used to come into the ward and bring music with her but now she's in new york and doesn't have so much time to visit anymore. she's growing up.

nurses went through the routine of exercising his limbs daily though it was revealed after several months to be without purpose; elijah's muscles showed no sign of atrophy. elijah's hair is still struggling a few months out of mohawk and his face is clean shaven from the morning of the twenty-seventh of january, two thousand and four, skin still smooth, slack with sleep.

6\. in february two thousand and nine debbie realises that elijah is a saint. there is no other explanation. the house sustains serious fire damage when she falls asleep after fasting for six days in two thousand eleven, letting the candles that overwhelm elijah's bedroom burn too low, wax softening and collapsing the fragile columns holding the flames aloft; they catch onto the masses of dried and rotting flowers around the room.

hannah hires the lawyers and signs the papers, sets up a gradual distribution of funds to ensure elijah is cared for in an elite nursing home. his room number is eightninefive, and he shares it with two other motionless bodies, their skin loose as if they are shrinking within it. he looks as if he's going to wake at any moment.

7\. hannah's grandchildren don't talk about the family secret, they know not to ask. all their mother will tell them is that her mother walked down the aisle on her own, and in marrying cast away all associations with her past life. they suspect a lover, an illicit child, a mysterious death in the family. she's old now and they want to ask her before it's too late but she seems more fragile than ever.

8\. in twenty one sixteen the funds keeping the private nursing home afloat dry out. no one can remember when the young man in room eightninefive was admitted, but everyone is sure that he never had visitors. the bank seizes the country property and all twelve staff are dismissed.

9\. the four levels of rose beds falling away from the old building burst into raw life at their sudden lack of tending. over a period of forty years they cover the outside walls, thorns scratching over the paint cracks like a record needle over the unevenly grooves of a ruined vinyl. another twenty years and the brittle glass of the windows will crack and shatter as the thickening branches twist away the rotting lintels. the building will be clothed in flowers, inside becoming out, dream-like.

**Author's Note:**

> http://hopeful-fiction.livejournal.com/19743.html


End file.
